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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
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BetaChapters 8-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary
Five years after Douglass moved to Baltimore, his old enslaver Captain Anthony suddenly died. He didn’t leave a will, so his estate had to be valued so it could be divided between his surviving children, Andrew and Lucretia. Douglass had to return to the plantation to be valued with the other property. This gave him a “new conception of his degraded condition” (67), as he was literally assessed and given a monetary value. All the enslaved people were grouped together to be valued, ranked alongside horses, sheep, and swine. The enslaved people were then divided as property between the two children. Andrew had a terrible reputation as a cruel wretch and a reckless spender, and everyone feared they would be assigned to him. Douglass was particularly afraid, for he had experienced kindness. He was grouped in the portion of the estate given to Lucretia and sent back to Baltimore. In total, the valuation took a month. Not long after this, both Lucretia and Andrew also died, and their property transferred to strangers. None of the enslaved people were freed. Douglass’s grandmother spent her life working on the plantation, and despite her years of work, when the property was divided up, she was essentially cast out. She was moved to a small hut in the woods and left there to support herself alone.
Two years after Lucretia died, her husband Thomas remarried a woman named Rowena Hamilton. Thomas has a falling out with Hugh, who Douglass was living with in Baltimore. Due to this fight, Douglass returned to live with Thomas in St. Michael’s. Douglass left Baltimore but was less anxious about the change because his enslavers had become crueler over the past few years. He was sad to leave the boys in Baltimore, however. He also knew it was much easier to run away from the city than from the country. However, he returned to St. Michael’s still resolved to run away.
Chapter 9 Summary
Douglass left Baltimore in March 1832, after seven years with the Aulds. Thomas Auld and his new wife were “well matched, being equally mean and cruel” (74). Thomas is described “destitute of every element of character commanding respect” (76). As a man of little character, he did not command respect or authority, and was held in contempt even by the people he enslaved. The enslaved people called him Captain Auld, not “Master,” as a sign of disrespect. He was very cruel, and Douglass was reminded of what hunger felt like, which was jarring after living with Hugh, where there was always enough food. Douglass worked in the kitchen with three other enslaved people, and they received less than half a bushel of corn meal per week. This was not enough to live on, and they had to beg or steal food from their neighbors.
In August 1832, Auld went to a Methodist camp meeting and discovered religion, though this did not make him kinder or more humane. In fact, his newfound faith made him crueler, for he justified his brutality through his religion. Many preachers passed through the farm, though most were cruel and ignored the enslaved people. One young man decided to teach them how to read the New Testament, but there were only three meetings before they were attacked with “sticks and other missiles” (79) and forbidden to meet again. After nine months, Auld concluded that Douglass was not fit to work there and gave him to Edward Covey, a poor farm renter with a reputation for “breaking” young enslaved people—a reputation he was proud of.
Chapter 10 Summary
On January 1, 1833, Douglass went to work for Mr. Covey as a field worker for the year. He had never worked as a field hand before, and the transition was quite hard. His time on Mr. Covey’s farm was the hardest period of his life. Mr. Covey was as hardworking as he was cruel. The field workers worked all day, often until midnight during harvest season. They worked in all seasons, no matter the weather. Sunday was Douglass’s only day off. Enslaved people also had the days between Christmas and New Years as a holiday. Mr. Covey only had one enslaved person, a woman named Caroline, whom he bought to bear children. To facilitate this, he hired Mr. Samuel Harrison to live with them and impregnate her. When she had twins, Mr. Covey was overjoyed because the two children added to his wealth.
Douglass was only at Covey’s farm for a week when he received his first severe whipping. Mr. Covey sent Douglass into the woods to get a load of wood on a very cold day. He gave him a team of unbroken oxen, which Douglass had never driven before. Douglass made it to the edge of the woods, but the oxen were startled when they entered the woods and started running, dragging the cart through the forest. Eventually, the cart was shattered, and Douglass was relieved to have escaped death. He fixed the cart, untangled the oxen, and chopped wood. He had successfully returned to the edge of the forest when the oxen rushed the gate again. For the second time that day, Douglass was relieved that he had not been killed.
When he told Mr. Covey what happened, Mr. Covey ordered him to return to the woods, where he punished him for wasting time. This was the first of a series of whippings, which happened roughly once a week. Douglass writes, this “discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me” (88). Six months in, Douglass collapsed after a difficult day of work and went to Auld, his enslaver, to ask for his protection. Auld sent him back to Covey’s farm, where Douglass hid in the corn. He met a man named Sandy Jenkins, who was enslaved but had a free wife, and was on his way to see her. Sandy told Douglass he must go back to Covey, but to go to the woods and gather a specific root, which would protect him from whipping. Douglass was skeptical, but he did as Sandy told him. The next day, Mr. Covey tried to whip him, but Douglass fought back and grabs him by the throat. They fought for a couple hours, and Covey never whipped him again. This reinvigorated Douglass’s desire to be free. He was enslaved for four more years, but he was never whipped again.
On January 1, 1843, Douglass went to live with Mr. William Freedland, who was an educated Southern gentleman. While still an enslaver, he had some honor, and he was the kindest enslaver Douglass had while enslaved. While at Mr. Freedland’s, Douglass started a Sabbath school at the home of a free Black person. At one point, 40 people attended, even though they could be whipped for it. Several people learned how to read. Douglass formed a strong community and deeply loved everyone there. At the end of the year, Douglass was hired for another year by Freedland, but Douglass decided that this was the year he would “secure his liberty” (107). He encouraged the other enslaved workers to run away with him. They met regularly to discuss how to run away, and while they were daunted by the incredible challenge, they decided to run away via canoe the weekend before Easter.
The morning they were set to leave, three constables arrested them and took them to the Easton jail. After the holidays, Mr. Freedland brought Douglass’s coconspirators back to the farm, leaving only Douglass in jail. Douglass expected to be sold to a slaver, but Mr. Auld instead sent him back to Baltimore to live with Hugh to learn a trade. Three years and one month after leaving the city, Douglass returned to Baltimore, where was hired to Mr. William Gardner, a ship builder. After Douglass was attacked in the shipyard by white workers, he was assigned work in the shipyard where Mr. Hugh was the foreman. Douglass worked as a caulker, earning $6 to $9 per week, which made him very valuable to Mr. Hugh. All his wages were paid to Mr. Hugh.
Chapter 11 Summary
The final chapter chronicles Douglass’s escape. He notes that he must omit certain details to protect people who were involved and to prevent enslavers from discovering strategies that others might use. Douglass criticizes the public nature of the Underground Railroad for doing very little to enlighten the individual enslaved person while drawing attention to escape routes, which made enslavers establish more barriers to escape.
In early 1838, Douglass was growing increasingly restless. Mr. High continued to take his wages but occasionally gave him six cents in return, which offended Douglass. Douglass asked Thomas Auld if he could hire his time to earn money, but Thomas refused. He accused Douglass of plotting to run away and told him that wherever he ran, he would find him. Two months later, Douglass asked Hugh Auld instead, who agreed on that condition that Douglass pay him $3 per week and pay for his own tools, room, and board. This arrangement benefited Hugh, for he no longer had any obligations to Douglass. This arrangement continued from May until August, until one day, Douglass was a day late in paying Mr. Hugh because he attended a camp meeting outside Baltimore. Mr. Hugh was furious and told him he could no longer hire his own time. Douglass decided to run away on the third day of September, giving him three weeks to prepare. In the meantime, he worked and paid Mr. Hugh.
On the third day of September, Douglass left Baltimore for New York, securing his freedom. In New York, he was overwhelmed with loneliness. Luckily, he quickly met Mr. Ruggles, who let him stay at his boarding house. Douglass’s intended wife, Anna, who was born free, joined him in New York. They traveled to New Bedford, where Douglass sought work as a caulker. Several abolitionists helped them along the journey. Douglass was born Frederick Bailey, but in Baltimore he went by Stanley, and in New York he changed his name to Johnson. In New Bedford, however, there were many Johnsons, so he was renamed Frederick Douglass.
Douglass was surprised by the richness of the North. He found work but was unable to work as a caulker due to the prejudice of white workers. Soon after arriving in New Bedford, he subscribed to the Liberator newspaper. In August 1841 he attended an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket, where he gave a speech. After that, he dedicated himself to the cause of abolition.
Chapters 8-11 Analysis
In Chapter 8 Douglass documents the dehumanizing effects of being considered chattel or property. A similar theme is explored in Chapter 10, in which Douglass was earning a significant wage as a skilled caulker, but all his income was paid to his enslaver. He explains:
I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned it,—not because he had any hand in earning it,—not because I owed it to him,—nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up (121).
While Douglass was happier and treated better in Baltimore, he was still robbed of his autonomy. When Hugh gave Douglass six cents after taking $6, this showed Douglass that he was actually entitled to the entire amount. This is yet another anecdote Douglass uses to reveal the illogical and inhumane nature of slavery.
Slavery and Christianity is another key theme, and Douglass argues that Christianity does not make enslavers more humane. Auld, for example, “found religious sanction for his cruelty” (79). In one incident, Douglass recounts him whipping a young woman with a disability until she bled while quoting the scripture. The woman fell into the fire as a child and was so badly burned that she had limited use of her hands. Douglass concludes that Auld tortured her precisely because she was weak and defenseless. Eventually, Auld released her from the plantation, leaving her to “starve and die” (80).
Mr. Covey was another religious man defined by his cruelty. A class-leader in the Methodist church, he was famed for training and “breaking” young enslaved people. However, some of the men of faith were less cruel. One of the minsters, Mr. George Cookman, was believed to have influenced Mr. Samuel Harrison to emancipate the enslaved people who worked on his property, and he treated the enslaved people on Mr. Auld’s farm better. The enslaved people were forbidden from learning how to read the New Testament, despite it being religious instruction. Douglass concludes, “thus ended our little Sabbath school in the pious town of St. Michael’s” (79), highlighting the limitations of this approach to faith, as they did not try to teach enslaved people more about religion. Ultimately, Douglass suggests that religion alone does not make one humane. He points to Mr. William Freedland, who was the most humane of the enslavers Douglass met; he argues that Freedland’s lack of religion was an asset, for religious faith was used as a cover for cruelty.
The period at Mr. Covey’s farm was the hardest period of Douglass’s life. Covey’s unbelievable and unrelenting cruelty breaks Douglass physically and spiritually:
My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, my disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute! (88).
This experience is important to Douglass’s argument. He has already shown that the enslaver’s cruelty was stoked by the institution of slavery, not only by individual disposition. This argument is extended in Douglass’s own experience, in which he was transformed from a driven, proud individual to a man whose spirit was crushed. When he arrived at Mr. Auld’s house to beg Auld to take him back from Mr. Covey, for example, Douglass was “covered with blood. My hair was all clotted with dust and blood; my shirt stiff with blood” (91). He was so brutalized that his humanity was stripped away.
This has significant implications. Douglass argues that he is not exceptional or remarkable. Rather, slavery crushes the spirit and intellect of those who are brutalized by it, but with abolition, all those people could reach the same intellectual heights that Douglass has attained. He uses his own story to show that formerly enslaved people are not less intelligent; rather, they have been prevented from reaching their potential.
Douglass became a “man” again after fighting back. Attacking Covey “rekindles the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within [him] a sense of [his] own manhood” (97). He recommitted to his desire to be free. Normally, Douglass would have been punished for fighting Mr. Covey, as it was a crime to defend oneself against a white man. However, Mr. Covey was proud of his reputation as a cruel overseer, and admitting that one of his enslaved workers had challenged him would undermine this narrative.
Force is one way that slavery is maintained as an institution. However, the holiday between Christmas and the new year is also identified as a key thing that upholds the institution. If the holidays were not offered, Douglass writes, “I have not the slightest doubt that it would lead to an immediate insurrection among the slaves” (99). Holidays were an integral part of the inhumanity and fraud of slavery, for they seemed like a benevolent act by enslavers. During the holidays, enslavers encouraged enslaved people to drink by adopting strategies like betting on who could drink the most without getting drunk. This encouraged people to drink to excess, which taught enslaved people that freedom was just enslavement by other means, for rather than “virtuous freedom,” one falls under the control of alcohol in “viscous dissipation” (99). Douglass uses these expectations to his advantage. Encouraging vice is thus shown to be a strategy to maintain control. In recognition of the importance of education, Douglass began teaching other enslaved people. He did this to encourage mental freedom, which is a necessary step to true freedom. Because attending religious school was a crime, Douglass and the other attendees pretended to be “wresting, boxing, and drinking whiskey,” which they were encouraged to do, rather than learning “to read the will of God” (105).
In the shipyard in Baltimore, Douglass worked alongside white people for the first time. At first, things ran smoothly, as the majority of Black workers were free. However, the white workers became anxious that they would lose their jobs to lower-paid Black workers and refused to work alongside them. While Douglass wasn’t in this category of worker, they eventually became bothered working alongside him as well. They began to hector him and occasionally strike him as he worked, culminating in an attack that almost cost him his eye. Douglass returned to Hugh, who was outraged, but there was no redress for the crime.
When Douglass arrived in the North, he was surprised by the wealth he saw. Because it did not have slavery, he assumed the North must be poor, for how could one accumulate wealth without the labor of enslaved people? He was quickly disabused of this notion. The churches, houses, and gardens were spacious and well maintained. He was shocked by the fine ships, granite warehouses, and workers calmly performing their jobs. The people were healthier, happier, and stronger than those in the South. He was especially struck by the emancipated people who were refined, intelligent, and owned property. Douglass concludes that force is not required for productive work; rather, people can thrive when able to calmly commit to their craft, which provides a further justification for abolition.
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